Description

Please Join Us!

Legendary jazz singer and NEA Jazz Master, SHEILA JORDAN, whose jazz career spans over 70 years, will perform at Jimmy's Jazz and Blues Club on Sunday, September 11, from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. Ticket cost includes a three-course dinner with choice of entree, an on-stage conversation with Sheila Jordan, and her 60-minute performance.

Accompanying Sheila will be four acclaimed musicians from the area: Eugene Uman, piano, Charlie Jennison, sax, John Hunter, bass, and Tim Gilmore, drums.

The event is sponsored by the nonprofit Seacoast Jazz Society, with ticket proceeds helping to support the Society's jazz education programs for the community, local musicians, and young artists.

For tickets and complete info, go to: https://www.seacoastjazz.org/jordan

About Sheila Jordan

Born in Detroit but raised by grandparents in a Pennsylvania coal town, Sheila grew up in poverty with a difficult family life. Music was her escape. In 1942, at age 14, while visiting her mother in Detroit, she dropped a coin in a coffee shop juke-box and heard Charlie Parker's "Now's The Time", deciding that was the kind of jazz she would pursue. In the late 1940s she played Detroit clubs with Skeeter, Mitch, and Jean (Sheila), and pioneered bebop and scat singing—an unknown predecessor to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

In 1951 she moved to NYC and studied music theory and harmony with innovative pianist Lennie Tristano and bassist, Charlie Miingus. She pioneered the bass-voice duo, a singing style that relied heavily on improvisation with her only accompaniment being music by an upright bass player. She performed and recorded with Tristano and Mingus, as well as many other jazz luminaries such as Charlie Parker, George Russell, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk. In 1963 she was the first female to record an album for Blue Note Records (Portrait of Sheila). Sheila still is performing today, recently at Birdland and this past spring in Europe, often with bassist Cameron Brown. She is an avid teacher of young artists and started the first vocal workshops at New York City College.

In 2012 she was named a Jazz Master Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, joining the illustrious ranks of only a handful of other jazz artists. This award is the highest honor a jazz artist in this country can receive. There have been several other prestigious awards throughout her career. This May the Jazz Journalists Association voted to give her the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award for Jazz Performances and Recordings. And the recent annual Critics Poll by DOWNBEAT ranked Sheila high on the list, for many years in a row now.

Please Join Us

Without a doubt she is one of America’s most distinguished jazz vocalists of our time. Please honor this great jazz legend by your presence at Jimmy's on September 11. Tickets can be purchased through Ticketmaster.com, through Jimmy's website, or by going to https://www.seacoastjazz.org/jordan.

Some of the High Praise She's Received:

“Sheila Jordan is not only a consistently creative and always wonderful jazz singer but a nurturing educator, a wise sage, and an utterly fascinating human being. One of the most consistently creative of all jazz singers...a superb scat singer and an emotional interpreter of ballads."
—Scott Yanow, jazz critic and author

"A superb scat singer, she can just as easily reach the emotional depths of a ballad. Whether singing well-known standards or original material, she makes it all sound like no one else.” 
—National Endowment for the Arts
 
"Her voice is pure magic..." 
—San Francisco Bay Guardian
 
“...a liberated Jazz singer of the finest kind.” 
—Kurt Elling
 
"Sheila Jordan is one of the Jazz world's best kept secrets 
—Blue Note
 
“Her ballad performances are simply beyond the emotional and expressive capabilities of other vocalists.”
—New York Times
 
“Sheila Jordan reigns undisputedly as mellow mistress of any jazz club she visits.... The Great American Songbook is Jordan’s oyster and she had us all shucking along.”
—DOWNBEAT
 
“The singer with the million-dollar ears.” 
—Charlie Parker

7-Minute NPR Interview
(There are numerous interviews, recordings, and articles about Sheila on the web, but here is a recent interview that gives insight to her as a person and musician.)
“A 'Jazz Child' Looks Back On A Life Of Sunshine, Sorrow”:
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/30/366792416/at-86-a-jazz-child-looks-back-on-a-life-of-sunshine-sorrow

Sincere Thanks to Chinburg Properties for Their Support of This Event.